What do you mean by the expressiveness in programming lanuguage?
- by prosseek
I see a lot of the word 'expressiveness' when people want to stress one language is better than the other. But I don't see exactly what they mean by it.
Is it the verboseness/succinctness? I mean, if one language can write down something shorter than the other, does that mean expressiveness? Please refer to my other question - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2411772/article-about-code-density-as-a-measure-of-programming-language-power
Is it the power of the language? Paul Graham says that one language is more powerful than the other language in a sense that one language can do that the other language can't do (for example, LISP can do something with macro that the other language can't do).
Is it just something that makes life easier? Regular expression can be one of the examples.
Is it a different way of solving the same problem: something like SQL to solve the search problem?
What do you think about the expressiveness of a programming lanuage? Can you show the expressiveness using some code?
What's the relationship with the expressiveness and DSL? Do people come up with DSL to get the expressiveness?
